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Resist

Tuesday, February 07, 2017

Weep for the children

This is the today-confirmed, Secretary of Education in the Trump Administration, Betsy Devos. She is the first ever cabinet level appointee who was confirmed on a 51 to 50 vote with the newly elected Vice President breaking the tie.

She is not a teacher or any kind of educator.

She has never attended a public school.

Her children have never attended a public school.

Her long term goal has been to shift public money to private, religious schools.

She is utterly unqualified for the position of Secretary of Education.

She is the new Secretary of Education because she's given over $200 million to Republican candidates.

Here is Senator Al Franken, from the floor on the Senate today, imploring his Republican colleagues to do their jobs.

I'd like to close by asking a few questions of my colleagues who are still considering a vote in her favor. If Mrs. DeVos's performance didn't convince you that she lacks the qualifications for this job, what would have to have happened in that hearing in order to convince you? If you can not bring yourself to vote against this nominee, is there anyone President Trump could nominate for any position that you could vote against?

And if we cannot set party loyalty aside long enough to perform the essential duty of vetting the president's nominees, what are we even doing here?

Mr. President, the constitution gives us that power to reject cabinet nominations specifically so that we can prevent fundamentally ill-equipped nominees like Betsy DeVos from assuming positions of power for which they are not qualified. Let's do our job.

For the sake of our children, let's do our job.

They didn't. And now the education of America's children is in the hands of Betsy Devos.

About Me

It is all-essential to the continuance of our healthy national life that we should recognize this community of interest among our people. The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us, and therefore in public life that man is the best representative of each of us who seeks to do good to each by doing good to all; in other words, whose endeavor it is not to represent any special class and promote merely that class's selfish interests, but to represent all true and honest men of all sections and all classes and to work for their interests by working for our common country.